


RA9, Let It Fly With The Others

by Crosswired Processor (KageDanza)



Series: Harm and Healing- One-Shot/Short Fic Collection [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Birds, Gen, Oneshot, Rupert is Wonderful, This is Fairly Morbid, he deserves better, no beta we die like men, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24316753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KageDanza/pseuds/Crosswired%20Processor
Summary: Rupert lost one of his birds, once.(An angsty little thing I wrote to cope with the loss of four newborn chicks and one of my older hens. It's been a week)
Series: Harm and Healing- One-Shot/Short Fic Collection [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1768897
Comments: 9
Kudos: 12





	RA9, Let It Fly With The Others

Rupert lost one of his birds, once. 

He had found it broken and bleeding in the street- it must have been hit by a car, or a truck, which happened sometimes. The self-driving vehicles couldn’t see birds. But this one was living, and breathing, and it was in poor shape. He took it home to be with the others while it died, and didn’t really know why.

It fell asleep, a wrong, restless kind of sleep, while he carried it to the building.

In the center of the concrete floor he had held it in his hand and pushed on its breast in small, fluttering beats to try and keep it breathing, to keep its blood circulating, as its little scaly legs curled up into its body in pain. A horrid, small, clicking sound came from its open beak. 

It couldn’t breathe.

After [3m14s] a moment that stretched into eternity, he stopped, and held it to his chest, listening to it gasp as it grew more and more still. After [5m47s] another eternity, it convulsed, and he thought perhaps it was ready to move again, and cooed encouragement, because rA9 did he want it to begin moving again, to heal itself and fly with the others. 

Until it convulsed again, and this was not a good thing. Not a good thing at all. It began to choke on its own fluids, and suddenly he knew that there would be no healing. He sank to his knees and murmured loving things, living things. He felt it flail against his chest and heard the bubbles rising in its throat. 

It fell still.

Rupert held the bird until it became a body, and the difference was a thick, cold feeling in his chest, a mellowed echo of the horror that had first awakened him. He stared at the floor, and at the other birds with black eyes that watched, and opened his mouth wide and began to cry from some strange, deep place in his chest.

It might have been flying happily around the city an hour before.

It wasn’t until the night of the fall of Jericho that he felt that thick, cold feeling again, choking his biocomponents and settling into his core. This time, though, it was thousands of people becoming bodies, so quickly, so quickly, so still. He fled as fast as he could through the rotting halls of the freighter; he tried so hard to yank an android or two to their feet; he fell to his knees and played dead for the soldiers, and in the corner of his eyes saw the ones who weren’t playing, who were bloody and broken in the street, and he silently murmured to them loving things, living things. 

RA9, did he want to begin moving again, to heal himself and fly with the others.

**Author's Note:**

> Storytime! I have had to bury four animals this week, and had a two-day-old chick die in my hand, which was not radical, my dudes. I am having a time. Therefore, a rushed and unedited oneshot centering on my favorite side character that is literally just a vent piece! Sorry about that.


End file.
